Bit off-topic but I thought someone working in environmental subjects might have a better idea than Google: I need to clear out my flat back to its 'unfurnished' state in order to get my deposit back, and I managed to give away a lot of good stuff to Freecycle already. However I ended up with lots of large furniture pieces, mainly wood, some metal and bits and bobs. Our council started to charge for this type of collections and it works out very very expensive to arrange it. Do you know who could make use of this type of household waste? Any ideas apart from a google search? Many thanks...

metal - just leave it outside, guaranteed it will be gone within the hour, taken by scrap metal dealers.

You can look on your council website - around my way we have a charity who do house clearences (we actually used to buy furniture off them when we used to rent our house - we'd get solid wood double wardrobes for £5 each etc.) They should pick it up free.

I was going to suggest freecycle, ebay or gumtree otherwise.

Thank you Sneaks. Would they take all type of metal? I'll give it a go then. I tried freecyle & gumtree for the scrap wood (all the good stuff already taken by freecycle users).

Not totally sure, but we've left old ovens etc out the back for a few nights and they're taken anyway (we've also had the lead nicked off our roof :-s ) so I guess they'll take anything! My inlaws were cleaning out their garage the other day and had all their stuff out on the side of the road, thinking they'd have to hire a van to get rid of it all and the scrap metal people came and took the lot, wood, old junk, the lot. Although I suspect that some of it would be fly tipped (although that's only an assumption).

Wandsworth doesn't charge at it's recycling depot, so far!

Thank you, I am checking Wandsworth now. I don't live in that council, but they seem to have addresses on their website.